Digital media has become a primary form of distribution of music, video, news articles, games, and the like. Currently, digital media purchased and used by individuals is usually protected from illegal copying by a restriction on which device can playback the digital media. The playback of the digital media occurs where a license for the digital media is present for the particular device intended for playback and/or for the particular user of the device used for playback. Accordingly, a different user with a different device cannot playback digital media with such restrictions. Such restrictions prevent sharing of the digital media from an initial purchaser to an entity who may also be interested in having a functional copy of the digital media.
The popularity of a particular digital media work is often increased by word of mouth. Initial purchasers may allow another individual to listen, watch, or otherwise experience the playback of a particular digital work on the purchaser's device and the other individual may decide to purchase a copy of the digital media for their device as well. For example, an initial purchaser may allow a friend to listen to a purchased song, and the friend may then wish to obtain a copy of the song as well. However, to prevent illegal copying, restrictions such as those discussed above prevent the song from being copied for use by the friend, so the friend must go through the normal channels of distribution to obtain a licensed copy of the song that the friend may playback.
Requiring the friend to go through the normal channels of distribution may result in the friend not following through with the purchase of the digital media. For example, the friend may choose not to do so due to the effort required or may simply forget to do so at some later time. Furthermore, the initial purchaser is given no motivation to encourage the friend to follow through with obtaining a licensed copy of the digital media. Accordingly, the number of transfers, and particularly purchases, for a given digital media work suffer.